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THE U.S.S. INDIANAPOLIS
BEYOND THE
SHARK TALES
O n July 26, 1945, the heavy cruiser U.S.S. Indianapolis landed on
Tinian Island in the northern Pacific and delivered components
for the atomic bomb that 11 days later would be dropped on
Hiroshima. World War II was almost over. But for the crew of the Indy,
the worst of the war was yet to come. Four days later, en route to the
Philippines, the ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. The ship
sank in 12 minutes, taking some 300 men down with it. The remaining
900 men were set adrift for the better part of five grueling days. Only 317
survived. It was the worst disaster at sea in U.S. naval history.
It was also perhaps the U.S. Navy’s most shameful debacle. The strand-
ed sailors died in many ways, all horrible: injury, hypothermia, saltwater
poisoning, shark attack—even homicide, when men began slipping into
hallucinatory madness, stabbing and drowning shipmates they mistook
for enemies. But most of those deaths had the same ultimate cause: the
Navy’s failure to notice the Indianapolis was overdue at its next port of
call and its failure to investigate. No search party was dispatched; the
survivors were rescued only after a passing plane spotted them. To de-
flect blame, the Navy court-martialed the ship’s captain, Charles McVay,
for failing to elude the attack—the only U.S. captain court-martialed for
losing a ship in the war. He later committed suicide. After a campaign to
clear his name, McVay was exonerated in 2000, and the Indy survivors
had something to celebrate at last: their story told truly.
—GH
BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES